COURT OF KING'S BENCH. The . su preme court of common law in the kingdom, now merged in the High Court of Justice. See COURTS OF ENGLAND.
It was one of the successors of the curia regis and received its name, it is said, the king formerly sat in it in person, the style of the court being coram rege ipso (before the king himself). During the reign of a queen it was called the Queen's Bench, and during Cromwell's Protectorate it was called the Upper Bench. Its jurisdiction was originally confined to the correction of crimes and misdemeanors which amounted to a breach of the peace, including those trespasses which were committed with force (vi et armis), and in the com mission of which there, was, therefore, a breach of the peace. By aid of a fiction of the law (see COURT Or THE STEWARD AND THE MARSHAL ; BILL OF MID DLESEX), the number of actions which might be al leged to be so committed was gradually increased, until the jurisdiction extended to all actions on the caee, of debt upon statutes or where fraud was al leged, and, finally, included all personal actions whatever, and the action of ejectment. See ASSUME SIT ; ARREST ; ATTACHMENT. It was from its con stitution, ambulatory and liable to follow the king's person, all process in this court being returnable "carom rege ubicungue tum fuerimus in Anglia" (wherever in England we [the sovereign] shall then be). It was for centuries held at Westminster. As
early as Henry IV.'s reign the king could not pro nounce judgment.
It consisted of a lord chief justice and four puisne or associate justices, who were, by virtue of their office, conservators of the peace and supreme coroners of the land.
It had original criminal jurisdiction and transferred jurisdiction from inferior courts, by Certiorari, where a fair trial could not be had in the inferior court or some difficult question of law was likely to arise; also by writ of error and motion for a new trial. Its civil jurisdiction was original and in er ror. The former did not exist originally in ordinary civil suits between man and man, but was attained by a fiction that the de fendant was in the custody of the marshal (supra). The jurisdiction in error was by audits querela, motion for a new trial, and in respect certain errors in the process of the court. Jurisdiction in error belonged almost exclusively to the King's. Bench. It had su perintendence over the proper observance of the law by officials and others by means of certain "prerogative writs": Certiorari, pro hibition, mandamus, quo warranto, habeas corpus, de homini replegiando, mainprize, the writ de odio et atia (which last three were superseded by habeas corpus); 1 Holdsw. Hist. E. L. 78.